Now
here's a complete Madama Butterfly which, and this is high praise, is fit to
be mentioned in the same breath as the Scotto, Bergonzi, Barbirolli set made
in the same city 40 years before. Pappano is a natural Puccinian but he has
never displayed a more total immersion in the idiom than here. Aided by a
recording of remarkable transparency, every detail of Puccini's delicate
orchestration emerges as never before. Neither of the two principals,
Angela Gheorghiu or Jonas Kaufmann, has sung Butterfly in the opera house
and neither, I suspect, ever will. Gheorghiu because the part is too vocally
demanding done live and Kaufmann because the role of Pinkerton is so
thankless, being both short and dramatically unattractive because Pinkerton
is a rat. Gheorghiu says she wanted to record Butterfly in the
mid-Nineties, and she might have sounded better then, because her voluptuous
voice undeniably spreads a bit these days. But she is still as good as it
gets among contemporary Puccini sopranos. As for Kaufmann, every time I
hear him, my admiration grows. He, too, has a splendidly heady Italianate
voice , used with a Northern European restraint. This is much to the music's
advantage and is, of course, essential in a recording intended for repeated
listening as there are no irritating mannerisms. This Butterfly is a
triumph and joins the Barbirolli and Karajan sets